Dried noodles which have cracking or deformation are not visually beautiful, and the commercial value is drastically impaired. Particularly in the case of noodle strands, cracking is likely to cause damage such as breakage and chipping of noodles. Therefore, prevention of cracking is important.
Cracking of dried noodles is primarily attributable to uneven drying in a drying step. Conventionally, as a method for drying noodles for manufacturing good quality dried noodles, for example, Patent Literature 1 describes a method for drying noodles, comprising, in the state in which dried noodle materials are vertically hung by a hanging tool horizontally disposed in a drying chamber, generating nearly horizontal airflow along the longitudinal direction of the hanging tool by introducing air into the drying chamber from outside the chamber, while discharging air out of the chamber, and drying the dried noodle materials by exposing the dried noodle materials to the airflow transversely.
However, the method of Patent Literature 1 requires strict control of wind speed to prevent rapid drying, and moreover, the actual situation is that fully satisfactory results have not been achieved in respect of prevention of cracking of dried noodles.